As anxious as I am to get on my flight back to the northern shore of Lake Superior, I am happy to have a few minutes in the airport (and some free plug-ins to power up my well-used MacBook) to try to document the amazing learning I have experienced over the last few days.
On Tuesday I was scheduled to catch a flight to Toronto for #DLF2012 – the former “DeLC* Forum” turned “Digital Learning Forum” since the creation of the “eLC**” role this year. Before flying out, I had an exciting event about to happen in my school.
The art teacher, Colleen Rose, has been experimenting with digital technology and learning, Web 2.0 tools, and building an online PLN. Last Tuesday was the culmination of many weeks of work setting up a Skype call for her students with the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I wasn’t going to miss THAT for the world! Imagine taking senior art students on the north shore of Lake Superior on tour in MoMA without ever leaving the classroom. It was magical. Please take a moment to read about it here. It opens the doors to so many more learning opportunities for our isolated students.
As hard as it is to top that experience, my week was just getting started. By Tuesday evening I was in Toronto, connecting f2f with the many eLCs, DeLCs and other digital learning specialists from around the province. I have been involved in eLearning for 15 years, so there were many old friends and colleagues, and many new faces as well. Networking with this group is all about learning from each others’ experiences in implementing the provincial eLearning strategy, and how we can leverage resources to make the biggest difference for kids.
To quote Chris Walkling from North Bay: “We need to make eLearning an opportunity rather than a solution.”
Check out the Twitter feed for the Symposium here: #DLF2012 (sample below). We began with an engaging keynote presentation by Jesse Brown. The content was well-tweeted so I will let you follow that below.
Take aways:
Should we be ensuring that our kids get experience in coding (our girls in particular)?
How do we appeal to those visual literacy skills?
How do we leverage the world’s largest library in the classroom, while putting the lid on distraction?
What does it mean to be smart today?
This was only the first hour of my three days of learning. I have to go catch a plane north and think about the best way to share so much more.
Wishing everyone a safe and restful long weekend!
*DeLC = District eLearning Contact, a volunteer (i.e., unpaid), school board level position in Ontario. DeLCs maintain the “org” in the LMS for each school board participating in the Provincial eLearning Strategy, along with other duties.
**eLC = eLearning Contact, a funded (seconded and paid) position within each Ontario school board to promote digital learning (eLearning, Blended Learning, Homework Help and OSAPAC licensed software).
Wasn’t it a fun experience to use Skype? Oh man, just think of all the things we could do!